Abstract
Putting Fear of Crime on the Map is dedicated to stimulating a ‘spatially explicit’ research agenda on crime-specific fear. Drawing on empirical research, it makes an original contribution to the ways of studying fear of crime by demonstrating the value of insights from behavioural geography, combined with innovative spatio-temporal methodologies and advanced geographic technologies of analysis. The central thesis is that ‘fear mapping has the potential to provide an additional layer of understanding, as well as more localized and geographically relevant information than traditional statistical approaches’ (p. 82). This is hard to refute given that most traditional survey designs are ‘spatially implicit’ (p. 80). The advantages of fear mapping, measured through avoidance and protective behaviours, are positioned as providing insights into people’s ‘spatial choices’ (p. 83) in response to crime and disorder. In doing so, Doran and Burgess seek to promote the methodological, theoretical and policy advances that can be derived from inter-disciplinary research collaborations between behavioural geography and criminology. In particular, the authors underscore the significance of these collaborations in stimulating, for example, new developments in the conceptual nexus between disorder, fear and crime by examining their spatial and temporal coincidence, which they present as evidence in support of the often discredited ‘broken windows’ thesis. Moreover, the authors cogently illustrate that the data visualization capacity of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to present these relationships geographically acts as a powerful diagnostic tool for community safety partnerships in developing effective fear and crime management strategies.
It is unfortunate that the reader is not presented with a strong case for fear mapping at the outset of the book, given that this is its chief aim. In the first four chapters, the authors provide brief overviews of the ‘problem’ of fear of crime, and outline the diverse demographic, social and environmental theories that inform debates about its causes. The greatest value of this book, however, is to be found in its later chapters, which provide technically detailed but generally accessible overviews of two Australian case studies where fear mapping research tools were deployed in the form of surveys. The first study comprises a sample of 234 workers in the regional town of Wollongong and the second is of 381 residents and visitors in the inner-city area of Kings Cross. Drawing on ‘cognitive mapping’ techniques, respondents delineated on a paper map the places they avoided because they were afraid of being robbed, beaten or attacked. Temporal attributes were attached to the spaces identified. One known criticism of avoidance-based measures pertains to whether they actually tap into ‘active avoidance’ (Gray and McNaughton, 2000). In this research, the development of a scaled ‘avoidance hardness’ weighting (p. 169) represents a useful new spatial tool in this regard. The individual maps were digitized and overlaid, using GIS, to create maps of collective avoidance for different times of the day. Maps were supplemented by a smaller sample of ‘activity diaries’, which captured how protective behaviours featured in respondents’ daily routines. Collective maps were then compared with crime hotspots and concentrations of disorder systematically observed by the researchers. The triangulation of methods is to be commended and adds empirical weight to the research conclusions.
Through these case studies, the book makes several important contributions to the existing literature. First, it clearly demonstrates that fear of crime is spatially specific and varies by time of day, even in high crime areas, refuting the consistent statistical survey finding that fear is widespread, diffuse and of ‘truly striking dimensions’ (p. 181). These findings are allied to a developing body of spatial research that highlights a collective dimension to perceptions of insecurity in particular types of spaces and times of day (Innes et al., 2004). The spatio-temporal techniques outlined in this book are methodologically sensitive, arguably with less potential to ‘exaggerate’ the extent of fear of crime than traditional statistical approaches (Farrall et al., 2009). Second, the techniques build upon statistical approaches by providing a spatial analysis of the underlying motivations for crime-specific fear. In this regard, the top three situated ‘cues’ for fear, accounting for the greatest density of spatial avoidance, were all social (p. 193). Moreover, different types of crime ‘signals’ were shown to produce distinct patterns of spatial avoidance, thereby increasing our knowledge of the behavioural effects of crime. Third, the second case study identified distinct differences in patterns of fear by social group. Visitors were shown indiscriminately to avoid large areas of Kings Cross while residents produced fine-grained fear maps. This raises important dimensions of familiarity and area reputation, as well as situated crime ‘signals’, in shaping the avoidance-based fear maps of different social groups. Fourth, much research and debate to date has focused on places where perceptions of heightened fear co-exist alongside low crime rates. Nevertheless, a notable finding, consistent with my own research (Barker, 2010), was that hotspots of personal crime corresponded with busy thoroughfares perceived as ‘distinctly safe’ (p. 188). These findings prompt new avenue of enquiry into the ways that environmental cues – to both safety and danger – interact in particular spaces and at certain times of day.
The book also contributes to the existing literature in its discussion of the methodological challenges brought to light by the application of spatial research tools and advanced technologies of geographic analysis. While too numerous to note them all, a key issue is the technique used to capture ‘fuzzy’ spaces, such as ‘the dodgy area near me Gran’s’ (Waters and Evans, 2005: 1), into discrete or ‘hard’ boundaries using paper-drawn maps. To limit error, the authors usefully indicate that analysis should pay attention to the ‘central regions’ of spaces avoided. They also consider how this problem may be overcome by advances in online spatial tools, although note many challenges with ‘web-based citizen science’ (p. 262). Moreover, the authors conclude that important future improvements to fear mapping would be to combine these techniques with qualitative interviewing methods in an attempt to gain more nuanced and complex spatial information. The vignettes provided illustrate well the reasons why collective maps of fear need to be contextualized within the qualitative discussions that inform them. Some recent studies have sought to do this (see Barker, 2010; Kohm, 2009), incorporating qualitative approaches into GIS-based analyses.
One limitation of the methodological discussions in the book is its general lack of attention to the ethical issues raised by a spatially explicit research agenda on crime fears. A key concern, considered recently in relation to the launch of street-level crime maps in England (see http://www.police.uk/), relates to the potential unintended effects of the dissemination of fear and crime maps to the public. In particular, whether such visual information has the capacity to reassure or, conversely, heighten insecurity (Quinton, 2010; Ratcliffe, 2002). Nonetheless, the book successfully advances the methodological toolkit with which to study fear of crime and provides a useful opening to the insights and debates produced by spatial research developments in this field. GIS is a powerful tool of analysis which largely remains to be fully exploited in this area of study.